The Top 5 Reasons Why YOU Might Be Struggling to Get the Abs You Want

I feel really bad for people who put in a ton of effort to get a set of rock-solid, toned, sexy abs, yet they don't get anywhere close to seeing the results they should be getting. It's discouraging as hell. One of the most redeeming things about exercise and working out is that you typically experience results based on the amount of effort you put in. If you do cardio 30 minutes per day, 6-days a week you will lose a lot of weight. Given that you do the right exercises, if you follow a comprehensive chest routine and increase the amount you bench press over successive workouts you will get a bigger and stronger chest. It's just the way exercise and training works. But for some reason, ab development is so much more difficult...I guess that's why you don't see 6-packs populating the earth. Getting a phenomenal set of abs requires smart training, a healthy diet, and minimal equipment...not ab workouts 7 days per week, the latest ridiculous ab machine, or 1000 crunches. C'mon guys...get smart and start being efficient with your time spent training abs. Here are my top 5 reasons why YOU might be struggling to get the set of abs you're looking for:

1. You Can't See Them. This might seem brutally obvious, but the most important part of a nice set of abs is being able to see them. Bombshell. I don't care if you can do my ab challenge 18 times over, if you're body fat % isn't low enough noone will be able to see what you're packing. For men, your body fat has to be below ~ 10%, for women ~ 18%. If you want to get your body fat down to 6-pack levels, make sure to incorporate a solid dose of cardio and adopt a healthy diet.

2. You Try to Crunch Away the Fat. There's is no such thing as spot reduction. I'm ending this dumb idea forever. You can't crunch off the fat covering the lower section of your abs...nothing about our physiology supports this idea. It straight up doesn't work so don't waste your time. The only way to strip the fat from your abs is by gradually burning off fat from your entire body through cardio and weight-training. Unfortunately for all of us fat over the abs is usually the last to go and the first to come back, which makes getting/keeping abs all the more difficult. Be persistent with a healthy diet, weight-training, and cardio regimen and you'll be able to keep your body fat low.


3. You Workout Your Abs Every Day. Give it a rest...stop training your abs every day, or even every other day. Like our biceps, chest, shoulders, legs, or anything else, our muscles need time to rest, recover, and rebuild if you want them to grow. Think about it, would you do biceps curls 7x per week? Never. I recommend doing abs once every 3 days, which should be about twice per week. Not only does this let your abs actual recover and grow, but it'll save you a ton of wasted time.

4. You Only Do Crunches and Sit-Ups. Crunches and sit-ups primarily work the top of the rectus abdominus, aka the 6 pack muscles. Even though building up the rectus abdominus is incredibly important for a sexy set of abs, relying only on sit-ups and crunches will cause the obliques, transverse abdominus, and lower half of the rectus to lag behind. Think of the transverse abdominus as a belt that runs around your waist and sucks everything in tight. Exercises like the plank can help build up the transverse and make your entire torso more compact. The obliques run diagonally along the side of the torso into the pelvis, which forms the "v-cut" everyone loves so much. Diversify, diversify, diversify! Incorporating bicycle crunches, captain's chairs, and a variety of other ab exercises into your ab workout can help build all aspects of the core region, not just the rectus. Not only that, but changing your routine every month or so can help prevent your body from plateauing. You can check out additional ab exercises @ http://www.disantosfitlife.com/2010/02/spotlight-abs.html and http://www.disantosfitlife.com/2010/10/rip-up-your-obliques-with-these-three.html.

5. You Don't Increase the Difficulty. This is huge. Your abs aren't going to grow at all unless you force them to. Our muscles grow based on the principle of progressive resistance, which says that you need to increase the weight lifted, the amount of resistance, or the difficulty of the exercise if you want your muscles to grow. If you want to get huge legs you need to gradually increase the amount of weight squated...abs development works the same way. Instead of simply doing more reps of a basic exercise (ab exercises should stay between 12-20 reps per set), increase the resistance or choose a more advanced exercise. For example, try doing crunches with a dumbbell on your chest or do sit-ups at a declined angle. Adding weights or a decline can help make basic exercises significantly more difficult and help spark new ab growth. I promise you, doing 100s of crunches is not an effective way of developing your abs. Do it big...make it difficult.